论翻译中词性转换.doc

On Transformation of Parts of Speech in Translation I. Introduction Parts of speech are the core content of the traditional grammar according to which words are classified as follows: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, etc. Different languages have different standards to distinguish parts of speech. English belongs to the Indo-European language family, and parts of speech in it are categorized as word-order, lexical meaning and inflection changes. Nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs have complex systems of endings or vowel changes or both. For example, the form –ize, -en and –ify are used to denote the possessive case of verbs. But quite different from English, Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family and parts of speech are divided based on sentence structure function. Apart from the above differences, another great one is that English is a kind of static language which tends to use more nouns, prepositional phrases, etc. While Chinese is a dynamic one in which verbs are often used. So, when we translate between these languages, we commonly use transformation of parts of speech to make the translation more standard and idiomatic. No one can say that the target language (TL) and the source language (SL) texts “have the same meaning”, because each one has its own meaning. Eugene A. Nida, a distinguished American theorist, reformed the traditional parts of speech and established a new system which has been applied into practice. For example, TL：她工作出色。 SL：1. She works excellently. 2. Her excellent work 3. the excellence of her work 4. Her work is excellent. The different expressions indicate the same meaning. So the transformation of parts of speech is based on the premise that the target language must be faithful to the original language. Correctly using of parts of speech conversion can make the translated version smoother and clearer. This thesis will study the importance of the transformation of parts of speech